AOC 27B1H Monitor

All this time working from quarantine has given me a brand-new appreciation for a large display. For years, I’ve been working on a 15-inch laptop, and it manages to get the job done. Lately though, with more time spent looking at screens than paper, and more opportunities for gaming, I’ve felt that the small display on my laptop just isn’t enough any more. Thankfully, AOC sent a monitor for us to review, in the form of the 27B1H.

- Ren Alcantara

DESIGN

The first, and most striking thing about this monitor are the bezels. They’re really quite thin, and while the image itself doesn’t extend to the very edge of the panel, it’s still striking. Aside from that, it’s a nicely understated black body on a black stand. The inputs are all at rear, with controls available near the right corner of the bottom edge. As you might have gathered from the name, it’s 27 inches on the diagonal, offering what I feel is an ideal balance between screen size and overall bulk, and shouldn’t take up much more space than it’s worth. It’s also designed to be assembled without tools, so once you get it out of the box, it won’t be five minutes before you have it set up and running. One thing to note though is that it uses an external power brick and a DC barrel jack, so be prepared to make a little room for that as well.

HARDWARE

Aside from the slim bezels on three sides and an astounding 14.3mm thickness on most of the back, this display has the features you’re probably looking for in a work laptop. There’s of course an HDMI input, as well as an analog input, and a 3.5mm output jack in lieu of built-in speakers.